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Month: May 2017

Utility patents are the best way to protect most inventions. But to get one, you have to convince a USPTO examiner that your application is worthy.

Utility patents are by far the most common type of patent. In fact, the term “patent” almost always means “utility patent”. Almost all of the famous patents in history – the telephone, light bulb, transistor, airplane, motion picture, are utility patents.

What is a utility patent? Under US law, utility patents are the type of intellectual property (IP) that covers: “a new and useful process (e.g. a method of doing something), machine, manufacture, or composition of matter (e.g. a drug), or a new and useful improvement thereof.”

Note the underlined new. To get a utility patent application allowed (granted), the applicant has to prove to skeptical USPTO examiners that the invention really is new, and not just a trivial (obvious) tweak to older prior art.

Here “useful” means that the invention must have some actual benefit (isn’t clearly impossible or too illegal) and does more than just being decorative.

Utility patents are often the hardest type of IP to get. USPTO examiners usually attempt to use prior art to reject new applications. They expect applicants to rebut their rejections, often several times, before allowing the application. This process is called patent prosecution. If the applicant does not successfully rebut the various rejections, the application goes abandoned.

Legally, a US patent gives the owner the right to sue to collect royalties/damages and/or to attempt to block someone else from practicing the invention in the United States, but not internationally. The exact scope of legal protection is determined by the patent claims.

Patent valuation: Patent valuation is dictated in part by the desires of others to practice the invention, the effectiveness of the patent in thwarting these desires (what the claims cover), and the invention’s potential market size. If a particular patent covers an invention that no one else wants to practice, that patent isn’t going to be worth much!

Assuming maintenance fees are paid at 3-4, 7-8, and 11-12 years after issue, US utility patents typically last for 20 years from initial filing, sometimes more if the USPTO has taken too long to review the application. After that, they expire (go abandoned) and become public domain.

US patent inventorship criteria are tricky, but “conception” of the invention and “intellectual domination” are more important than reduction to practice.

If multiple people are involved with your invention, one issue that commonly arises is: “who gets listed as inventor or co-inventor, and in what order?”

For academic and scientific papers, there is a common order – the junior person who did most of the work often goes in front, the senior professor or principal investigator who may or may not have done much work goes at the end, and other persons go in the middle as co-authors according to usually unwritten criteria. So long as no one is seriously offended, the co-author list otherwise doesn’t matter too much.

Many inventors begin their careers by writing academic papers, and often make the mistake of thinking that the same rules apply to patents.

However, patents are different. You probably wouldn’t let a friend put his name on the deed to your house unless you want to give him co-ownership. Patents are more like property deeds. In the US, just who is and who isn’t a patent inventor can make a big difference in terms of who ultimately owns the patent. As a result, patents have their own set of rules as to who is and who isn’t considered an inventor.

So what are the rules for inventorship? The USPTO rules are covered by MPEP 2137.01 INVENTORSHIP. These rules were worked out through a number of court cases, and are occasionally a bit fuzzy and open to interpretation. At the risk of oversimplification, the main idea is that the inventor is the person who conceived of the invention, and not necessarily the person (such as a supervisor) who suggested working on the problem, or the person (such as a technician or programmer) who did the hands-on work to reduce the invention to practice (e.g. make a working prototype). In fact, reduction to practice is usually not necessary.

Other considerations, such as the issue of “intellectual domination”, are also important. An inventor who is “intellectually dominating” an invention may still be able to use suggestions from others without making them co-inventors.

Things can get tricky. Sometimes the supervisor’s suggestion is really the key insight behind an invention, making the supervisor an inventor. Similarly, sometimes the person reducing the invention to practice ends up solving unexpected problems, and these solutions form a key part of the invention, making the “technician” an inventor. Here looking at the invention’s claims can help sort things out. Who was responsible for what? Note, however, that claims can change during the examination, and sometimes an inventor can end up being added to an invention, or left on the “cutting room floor” as a result.

In any event, the best time to consider these issues is in advance of filing. It is also important to discuss assignment in advance of filing as well since the usual goal is to have 100% of the invention assigned to the same persons or organizations.

In the TC Heartland v. Kraft Food case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Eastern District Court of Texas is no longer patent litigation central. Goodbye forum shopping.

In a strange quirk of patent law, a single judge from Marshall Texas (population 24,000) has been deciding more than 25% of the US patent infringement cases. If you wanted to sue someone for patent infringement and wanted a friendly court, the Eastern District Court of Texas was the place for you.

Put it this way: so much patent litigation happened here that Samsung actually sponsored a local Marshall Texas ice skating rink, just to keep the locals happy.

This is very unusual. Corporations are typically sued in their state of incorporation or in the primary state where they do business. However, patent litigation has had its own set of rules. For nearly a generation, lower courts have interpreted these rules as implying that corporations can be for sued for patent violations nearly anywhere in the US.

It didn’t take long for patent litigation experts to figure out that if this was the rule, then why not sue where the courts are friendliest? This practice is also called “forum shopping”.

The local economy around Marshall Texas had been struggling. What to do? In what may have been a bit of a “race to the bottom”, the Federal Court and local juries in Marshall Texas became increasingly patent-plaintiff-friendly. Lots of attorneys with big corporate expense accounts started flying to Marshall. Good for the local economy, but it starts to look a bit fishy…

In the recent TC Heartland v. Kraft Food decision, the Supreme Court decided that this had to stop. They ruled that if Congress had intended this sort of thing, Congress would have said so plainly. They also pointed out that there wasn’t much of a basis for the “file anywhere” interpretation. So goodbye “file anywhere” rule. And for the most part, goodbye Eastern District Court of Texas.

Going forward, the new hot spots for patent litigation may become Delaware (many corporations are incorporated there), California (high tech industry), and other high-tech areas.

The “Blurred lines” music copyright case went wrong because courts are not using modern abstraction-filtration-comparison (AFC) infringement tests.

Copyright covers creative expression but not ideas or information. Many copyrighted works, however, are a mixture of creative expression and ideas/information. This mixture gives courts headaches, and as a result, copyright litigation can be unpredictable.

For software copyright infringement cases, courts tend to use an “abstraction-filtration-comparison” (AFC) test. The AFC test was first introduced in the 1992 “Computer Associates v. Altai” case. For this test, the court (i.e. the judge with expert help) first “abstracts” (analyzes) the work and determines what parts are “expression” (copyright protected) and what parts are ideas (copyright ineligible). Then the court removes (filters out) the ineligible idea portions. If there are questions about what remains, the court can give the remaining “expression” portions to a jury to decide.

This test puts a lot of responsibility on the court to get things right and is hard to perform in practice, but at least it makes some sort of logical sense. Throw out the ineligible stuff, and just look at the rest.

The AFC test was inspired by the earlier “Scènes à Faire” (Scenes a Faire) concept often used for literary and movie copyrights. As a quick example, if you want to write a Western novel or film, then horses, guns, salons, bandits and the like are considered essential ideas, and these would be tossed out in a copyright case involving a Western theme.

So what went wrong in the recent “Blurred Lines” music copyright infringement case? The song admittedly tried to capture the party atmosphere of Marvin Gaye’s earlier “Got to Give it Up” song, but the lyrics and music were quite different. Both had party noises and “cowbell”, but these were different party noises and different cowbell. In fact, Marvin Gaye’s copyright was for sheet music that didn’t cover party noises and cowbell at all.

The problem is that outside of software, older tests, such as “objective substantial similarity” and “total concept and feel” are still being used. These older tests blur the distinction between creative expression and ideas and rely on an unskilled jury to magically sort things out.

To somewhat simplify the “Blurred Lines” case, the jury listened to music that contained a mixture of creative expression (different lyrics and music) and unprotected ideas (generic party noises and cowbell). To make matters worse, the jury instructions did not even tell the jury to try to distinguish between creative expression and copyright ineligible ideas.

So, not surprisingly, the jurors found infringement; most likely because both songs contained party noises and cowbell. Never mind that these were not covered by copyright and that as far as the actual copyrightable lyrics and music went, the two songs were quite different.

This case is presently on appeal. Various copyright experts have suggested that the way out of this mess is to expand the use of the AFC test from computer software to other types of copyright cases as well. Unfortunately, the law works slowly. Until then, go easy on the cowbell at parties.

In Star Athletica v Varsity Brands, the Supreme Court ruled that copyrights can cover the industrial designs of clothing, 3D objects, and other useful (functional) things.

The boundaries between different areas of intellectual property, such as copyrights and patents, can be fuzzy. Copyrights, among other things, cover artistic images and 3D sculptures on various media or “articles”, but the artistic feature must be able to exist separately from any functional (useful) part of the underlying media.

Copyrights v design patents: Copyrights require only minimal originality, are cheap, and last for generations. But, if you want to claim an ornamental design for a functional (useful) item, this falls into design patent territory. Design patents have a higher threshold for originality, are more expensive, and only last for 15 years.

Some things, such as clothing, and other 3D designs that combine artistic/ornamental and useful/functional aspects, fall into multiple areas, but not always as one might predict. Clothing “knock-offs” exist because the overall pattern or cut of clothing is conclusively (legally) presumed to be functional, hence copyright exempt. So this goes into the design patent bin. However artistic fabric patterns can be copyrighted.

Which brings us to the cheerleaders, and the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) recently decided Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands case. This teaches lessons that apply to other mixed artistic/functional things as well, such as 3D objects. So you folks with 3D printers, listen up!

Cheerleader uniforms have certain characteristic lines and colors, and Star Athletica copyrighted a number of these designs. Varsity Brands, possibly believing that fashion knockoffs are no big deal, copied them, got sued, and the case eventually made its way to SCOTUS.

Varsity had some interesting legal arguments – namely that the lines and colors were functional (no copyright) because they distinguished the uniform as a cheerleader uniform. However, SCOTUS didn’t buy it. They cited Mazer v Stein, an earlier 1954 SCOTUS case, where an artistic statute was ruled to have retained copyright protection even when used as a lamp base (made functional). Like this earlier case, SCOTUS ruled that if an otherwise copyrightable feature can be perceived as art separate from the useful article, then the feature can get copyright protection.

Unintended consequences? So we can have an ornamental design for a functional item (design patent). We can also have a useful item with an artistic feature (copyright); at least when theartistic feature can exist independently of the useful item. Confusing, and there may be some unforeseen economic issues. Although SCOTUS relied on the previous 1954 Mazar case, copyright laws have changed since 1954. Copyright now automatically attaches to nearly everything and lasts nearly forever.

In any event, if you are planning on doing fashion knockoffs, be careful. In fact, if you are any manufacturer planning on incorporating “an old art design” into a functional object, be careful.